Newsletter - Spring 2015

Museum Hours

The Museum will be opening in early April, depending on weather and
snowstorms and how soon Rebecca Davenport and Barb Willis can process the
greeting cards that now fill the exhibit space (see below). The museum
remains accessible to visitors by arrangement, of course; please contact
Curator Anne Pelkey if you wish to visit or consult the collections.

First Meeting of 2015

We will hold our first annual meeting and talk on Sunday March 29. The
speaker will be Jean Smith Davies, talking about the establishment and early
history of Camp Betsey Cox. This will be an afternoon meeting: potluck
desserts beginning at 1:30 pm at the Congregational Church, followed by a
business meeting and then Jean's presentation .

Further Activities

The Covered Bridge Society will be coming to visit on May 51 a Saturday.
Following their internal deliberations, there will be a presentation at
11:00 a.m. at which PHS members and the Pittsford public are welcome. Bill
Powers will talk about the Potwine Bridge to the north, and other PHS
members will follow with some background on Pittsford's covered bridges.

The Historical Society will be involved in the Memorial Day activities later
in May, as usual.
On June 211 we plan a Museum visit for the member's meeting, during the
afternoon (hope for good weather). The theme is the exhibit put together in
the spirit of last year's Vermont History Expo: Pittsford artists and crafts
people. We will be inviting local artists to come and display their work and
there will be a gallery talk on the works displayed in the exhibit and the
artists behind them.

On July 18 we hold our annual tag-and-bake sale. This is your chance to
dispose constructively of the white elephants & donkeys (a bipartisan
effort) that have been cluttering up your attic or basement.

The Crockett Card Caravan

In late January, Curator Anne Pelkey received an inquiry from Nancy Myers, a
florist in Bennington whose shop had closed; Ms. Myers had a substantial
inventory of cards from the Katherine Crockett label that had come to her
and needed to get them out of the store before a thrift shop opened its
doors in the space. The decision fell into the no-brainer category: of
course the Society wanted the Crockett materials.

For background: Katherine Crockett Marnell (1898-1979) was an art teacher
born in Brandon who began making and marketing greeting cards. Around 1951,
she set up her atelier in a barn on Furnace Road, and began silk-screening
her cards. Her volume of business was large enough to affect the Pittsford
Post Office, which was upgraded from third to second class (although we know
the personnel are first class). When she retired from the business in 19661
it was continued in Pittsford for a while and then moved to Manchester. A
number of Pittsfordites still remember working on the cards.

With the noble assistance of Bill Powers and Ernie Clerihew, unexpectedly
numerous boxes of cards and - larger and lighter - boxes of the boxes for
the cards were transported through frigid weather and over snowy roads to
the Museum, where they filled, for a time, all the open space in the
exhibits area. Ron Smith, to his credit, noticed a U- Haul truck in front of
the museum and stopped to make sure that things were going in, not out.

Rebecca Davenport and Barb Willis threw themselves at the task of sorting
the cards and putting them in new boxes, sustained by rhubarb muffins. Ernie
Clerihew is constructing shelving on the second floor to house the many
boxes of cards. Ivy Dixon is planning an internet marketing scheme (this is
hearsay).

Not all the designs were by Katherine Crockett; several of the boxes
contained materials on the other artists whose designs were used. So the
Society now has something of an archive of the commercial activities of the
Crockett Cards, a s well as a large store of delightful and lovely cards for
all seasons and humors.

Markers Update

Last year a committee chaired by Ernie Clerihew worked on drafting the text
for a new historical marker to be placed where the old Samuel Hopkins Patent
marker had stood, since Philadelphia lawyers have undercut the Pittsford
claim to Mr. Hopkins. The selected topic was the Pittsford iron industry,
that flowered in the era of the Granger stoves.

Our contact person, Mr. Dumville, in the Vermont Division for Historic
Preservation, then went onto the disabled list, and so the enterprise is
being revived. Peg Armitage has been reviewing the text on a letter­
by-letter basis (we had a dispensation allowing a longer text carrying over
onto two sides of the marker), building on her experience composing the
marker for the Sanatorium, and has edited the text as follows:

Pittsford

Its Iron Industry 1791-1882
I n 1791 Israel Keith built an iron blast furnace on Furnace Brook, about a
mile east of here. Iron ore and manganese came from Chittenden, and
limestone flux from Pittsford. Charcoal kilns reduced Chittenden's forests
to fuel for smelting the ore.

I n 1829 the Grangers built a foundry near the furnace. From 1829 to the
1860s the Granger foundry produced 300 cast iron stoves a year and shipped
them across the eastern US. Different models of stoves were intended for use
in kitchens, laundries, parlors and bedrooms. Other wares were kettles,
griddles, basins, flatirons, door latches and hinges.

The Granger furnace capacity was 2,600 tons of iron a year. The area became
known as Grangerville. Workers' houses, the company store, a school and post
office surrounded the furnace works and Granger brick homestead.